


Chrysalis

by Secret Staircase (elwing_alcyone)



Category: Zero: Akai Chou | Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Frozen Butterfly Ending, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-12-05 21:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11587029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/Secret%20Staircase
Summary: After the Frozen Butterfly ending, Mayu goes to see Itsuki again. Slight one-sided Mayu/Itsuki and background Sae/Itsuki, but not really enough to tag for.





	Chrysalis

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2015 BCL Christmas Exchange.

Somehow, Sae was in the storehouse. Itsuki had heard no turning of the lock, no creak of hinges, no step. And yet, there she was, her head tilted to one side as she watched him.

"What happened?" he asked. "When did you come back? Sae, you have to get out of here! If they catch you..."

While he was speaking she had come up close to the bars, and he could only see pieces of her face. One dark eye, fixed on him. Her fingers, curled through the gaps. There was something like rust under her nails.

"All that's over now," she said. Next moment, he didn't understand how, she was in the cell with him. "There's no escape. We tried, but it's no good. Even dying is no good. Is it, Itsuki?" Her eyes flicked upward, and he saw the rope tied over the beam. He remembered doing that — he had made the noose, then climbed up on the desk. He remembered slipping the rope over his head. But when? If he was still here talking to Sae, he must have lost his nerve. But he remembered — everything was so confused.

"It was wrong, to try to run away," she said. "Now no one will ever be forgiven. No one can leave. So in a way, we're all free."

She had come very close to him. He felt her hand, unexpectedly warm, creeping up his arm. She'd been doing that ever since she started thinking she might have a life as long as his and Yae's, a life stretching far into the future. She'd been thinking tentatively about who she might want to spend that life with in the world beyond, but she was scared, too. She'd been thinking of herself alone out there, with only Yae between her and the unknown. Ever since they'd started making plans to leave, her shy hand around his wrist had been silently asking him to promise he'd be with her, too.

Because he couldn't promise that, he tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go, and she was holding tight. Her fingernails pressed into his skin, and he thought of the red crescents of grime he'd seen under them.

"Let's go," she said, almost gently, tugging him away from the window. "Come with me."

He tried to tell her he couldn't leave the cell, but — he didn't quite know how — they were on the street. All the houses were shut up and dark; no one was about. Maybe Sae had been caught, but had somehow managed to slip away without them noticing, and now she wanted his help to get out again before they came looking for her. That had to be it. How fortunate, then, that even after tying the noose he hadn't been able to go through with it.

But...

He remembered the feel of the rope, the rough fibres sawing at his throat, the relentless pressure that went beyond pain into bursting stars of black and crimson. How could that be right? It felt so real.

"Sae," he said suddenly, sharply. He had noticed where she was leading him — not to Kureha Shrine or even Misono, but past his own home and down the steps towards Kurosawa.

"I told you," Sae said in a strange, flat voice. "No one can leave. Not you, not me." Then she looked at him, and her face softened. "Don't worry. No one's there — no one who matters. My sister is waiting. I want all three of us to be together."

"Yae's there?" Nothing she was saying made any sense, but if Yae was in the village too, and Sae was free to come and fetch him, perhaps, in some way he couldn't imagine, things weren't so bad. Perhaps the ceremony master had decided to spare his daughters? It hardly seemed likely, but what other explanation was there?

Sae drew him on through the great gates. On Whisper Bridge, she finally let go of his wrist and went to the railing at the place where the waters were deepest. She'd been holding something in her other hand all this time — a little stack of flat stones, round and grey — and as he watched she tossed them carelessly into the water, one, two, three. Only as the fourth was falling did Itsuki notice the pinwheel design, and realise she was throwing away the crests that opened the seal beneath the Old Tree.

It was too late to stop her. Now there was no way out of the village.

Sae smiled at him, as if to say, _There, you see?_ Kurosawa House was looming over them, dark and forbidding. Sae walked on, stepping carefully around the rotten boards.

Itsuki hadn't been inside Kurosawa House since his own ritual, and he was shocked at how shabby it looked, as if decades had passed, not only a year. The hanging curtains in the entrance were in rags, and so filthy he could hardly see the crest on them. It was wrong, all wrong. Even if the rest of the house were falling into ruin, they would never have allowed the entrance hall to get into this state.

"Where is everyone?" he said. The house should be full of people on the night of the festival, but it was as quiet as the street outside.

Sae put a finger to her mouth, smiling. "Shh. You'll see."

Even the smell was wrong: mouldy cloth, rotting wood, matting that should have been thrown out years ago. None of it made sense. If he could just remember what had happened after he'd climbed up on the writing desk and put the noose over his head...

Outside the great hall, Sae took his hand again. "Remember — no running away."

Before he was even all the way inside he knew why she had done that. He could smell the blood — had been smelling it all this time without knowing what it was. He hadn't thought it could be so strong, but then, there was so much of it.

The villagers were lying on the floor where they had fallen. He thought at first they had to be dead. None of them were moving, and there was so much blood. Some of them had been cut to pieces. They couldn't be alive. But their eyes watched him.

If anything in this world had been right, he would have run then, or gone mad, but he couldn't even be surprised. He remembered the noose drawing tight around his neck, then — nothing.

"Sae," he said. She was picking her way around the bodies with her arms outstretched, like a child moving from stone to stone across a pond. He tried to follow, but the dead were in his way. "Sae, what happened?" But he remembered the blood on her kimono, and under her fingernails, and thought the question ought to be, _What did you do?_

At the far side of the room, she looked over her shoulder. "Hurry up. Sister's waiting."

And would she be alive, or dead?

Sae must have grown impatient with him. Time slithered sideways again, and they were both mounting the staircase in the courtyard. For the first time, he really looked at her. It was surprisingly difficult. He had to concentrate, or his eyes kept sliding off to other things, not really seeing her at all. But when he made himself look, made himself see, it seemed to him that she was not Sae but a stranger, a girl in outlandish clothes, limping step by painful step. He could only see her for moments at a time; as soon as he stopped looking directly at her, even for a blink, she was Sae again.

Alive, or dead?

Another door, another corridor. They were deep inside the house now, in rooms he'd never seen before. They stopped before a door. Blood was smeared across the lock, and across the key she drew out to open it. She waited for him to follow her inside, then locked it again. It was a small room, dominated by an enormous doll stand, which he thought he remembered seeing taken from the dollmaker's house, years ago. One of the two empresses had lost her head.

"I thought it would be just the two of us," Sae said, "but she wanted me to come and get you."

"Yae's here?" Itsuki said uncertainly. He looked around again, and this time he noticed the screen in the back corner, with something humped behind it.

"I wanted it too," Sae added, looking at him through her eyelashes. "I used to dream that we were a family. Later on I'll get Chitose, and we will be. We'll be so happy. It's not a sin, is it, to be happy here?"

He could imagine her fetching Chitose, prying her out of her hiding place, like the women using old hairpins to dig mussels from their shells. He thought he would have done anything to stop that happening, but Sae's smile was slipping dangerously, so he tried to smile too.

"Wait a minute. I'll tell sister you're here." She slipped behind the screen, but when her shadow moved on the paper, it wasn't hers: it was the other girl. "Mio," she murmured, "I'm sorry I was gone so long. Wait until you see who I've brought. The three of us can all be together."

Mio. Not Yae. The sound of the stranger's name seemed to break the spell. He didn't have to stay and see what was behind the screen; he didn't have to know what was going on. He would go back to the storehouse, and finish what he'd started.

He reached for the door, remembering too late that it was locked, remembering too late how she could move between moments. Without a sound, she was behind him.

"I told you," she said. Her hands were on his throat. " _No one_ can leave."

 _Alive or dead?_ he'd wondered. He didn't have to wonder now. The worst was somewhere in between.


End file.
